Stronger
by teamreid215
Summary: Hotch's life is changed in an instant on his way home from work one night. Can his team help him remember everything he's ever known?
1. Chapter 1

Stronger

"He's waking up." The nurse said, walking into the visitors lounge at the hospital, where Rossi, Gideon, JJ, Reid, Morgan, Garcia, and Emily sat. They all hopped out of their chairs at once anxiously; they'd been waiting for hours for their fearless leader to open his eyes, especially Emily. It broke her heart even more than it did Garcia's to hear that he had endured wounds in that car crash that the doctors had thought would surely be fatal. But to never see him again… to never hear his voice… that would have inflicted an emotional toll far, far worse.

She rubbed her mascara-streaked eyes, unsuccessfully attempting to hold back tears of joy that he was awake and she might get to hear his voice at least one final time before he was gone for good.

"He's quite shaken up by the whole thing, so I'd be cautious. He might not even know who you are just yet." The nurse cautioned, as they were about to enter the room.

"N-n-not know who we..we..w.." Garcia gasped before falling into Morgan's arms and bursting into another fit of tears.

"It's ok, babygirl. It's all ok. Stuff like this happens all the time in car accidents, right?" He said, looking at the nurse.

"Actually, 44 percent of people who were involved in car accidents had absolutely no memory, and 48 percent had fairly little memory." Reid blurted as a condolence, trying to gain a miniscule foothold on reality in this stressful situation.

"He'll get his memory back in no time." The doctor answered, giving a more common-sense-based explanation.

"O-o-okay." Garcia gasped in between uncontrollable sobs, flowing as if the hoover dam had burst inside her eyes.

Gideon swung open the door to Hotch's room in the ER at Saint Sebastian Hospital, the same hospital Jack was delivered at and Foyet dropped off Hotch at two years earlier, revealing their once utterly unbreakable unit chief in a state of utter disintegration. Even Morgan shed a tear at the fragile being laying in the hospital bed that the nurses claimed was Hotch.

Garcia gasped as soon as she saw the frail, broken, semblance of a man that Hotch seemed to be laying on the cot before them. Rossi and Gideon both let a few tears fall of their own, only holding them back as to preserve some sense of normalcy in this unnatural state that they never in their wildest, most far-off and unreal nightmares could have imagined being in. JJ shed an avalanche of tears as she saw the once strong, stoic, and formidable man she'd worked with from the beginning and had so many cherished memories with in this withered state. Reid gasped, instantly looking at his feet, not being able to face his fragile existence, and started to cry as well.

And Emily lost it. The very instant her eye found its way to Hotch's worn-down, almost lifeless body, a large part of her died. She exploded into a fit of silent tears, water rushing down her face like Niagara Falls, as she thought of how scared and alone he must feel. She could not even in a far-off, alternate universe imagine her life without him. She really, truly, wholeheartedly, 1000% loved him to pieces. And right now, that's exactly what both of them were: pieces of the people they were yesterday.

"W-w-what's going on?" Hotch gasped, opening his eyes wide. "W-where am I?"

"Do you remember who you are?" the nurse asked him, her pen eager to jot down as much information as she could about his increasingly shaky medical status.

"No." he answered monotonously, saying it as normally as saying hello.

That simple, one-syllable, two-letter word seemed to shake the room with sobs of utter sadness and despair. Garcia started to bawl three times as hard as before, along with JJ. The men were only crying as much as before, but were now all looking down at their feet, unable to face the horrible scene lying before them. Emily started to cry even more, a thing she didn't even think was possible, unable and unwilling to face the fact that this man who had so much to look forward to now was unable to remember a shred of his existence.

"Do you remember what happened?" The nurse asked.

"No." he replied with precisely the same level of monotony as his previous response regarding his memory.

"Okay. You can stay with him."

The nurse paused for a moment, quickly jotted down something else, and approached the door, before pausing again to face the rest of the currently dilapidated Behavioral Analysis Unit team, consisting of four men who couldn't look up to save their lives, a broken figure lying on a cot, and three bawling girls with lines of black streaming down their faces. She felt sorry for the eight of them, especially Agent Hotchner, seeing as he couldn't remember a thing and was in a lot of pain. As she said the next few words, she felt like someone just took an extremely long blade and stabbed her forty-seven times.

"But don't tell him who he is."

And if the no's were an Earthquake, this was the tsunami that blew the entire team away. It was almost as if they gave them the name and location of a serial killer but told them they couldn't catch him, that he'd go on killing innocent people for the rest of his life and never be caught. They all were confused and heartbroken.

Gideon was the first person to break the awkward silence hanging around them.

"Not tell him?" he asked…er…screamed at the nurse like he was interviewing a serial killer about the whereabouts of a missing child. It seemed so unnatural not to tell him who he was- it was his natural response. Plus, he wasn't exactly known as Señor Manners.

"Well, his doctor decided telling him his identity would halt natural memory recovery. If he doesn't remember by the end of the week, you'll be able to designate one of you to tell him who he is, considering you're the only family he's got. You'll also need to help him through the recovery process. Even if he does remember everything, he's still going to be in a LOT of physical pain and disorder." She explained.

"OK. Can we still _talk _to him?" Gideon asked, slightly more sincerely than last time.

"Yes, you can talk to him."

"Is he allowed to know who _we _are?"

"Only if he remembers who you are."

The room went silent for a moment, with everyone just standing there, seemingly frozen in time. The nurse opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it. She jerked the door open and left the room.

"Guys- I, uh- I might have an idea…" Reid stuttered


	2. Chapter 2: Bleached, Burnt, Doctornapped

Chapter 2: Bleached, Burnt, Doctornapped.

Everyone's eyes darted to Reid in an instant immeasurable by nanoseconds of time. They were all so anxious to see what he had to say about jogging Hotch's memory, or whatever else; they knew that it would help him. Reid, after all, was like a walking encyclopedia of everything you could possibly read, and nobody knew that better than his team. If anyone could help Hotch out of his fragile state through use of knowledge, it would be him.

"There was this book I read about memory recall testing once. It's called "Paradise to Parasite-The Twisted Gardens of an Unstable Mind", and it said that the mind coming out of a physically and emotionally devastating experience was like a shirt that you burnt in a dryer fire, and bleached afterward. His brain is almost as nonexistent psychologically as the shirt; he could think we are ANYTHING right now. Do NOT give him any ideas."

"Is there anything we could do?" Emily spoke up finally, the words falling out of her mouth like snow in a tumultuous avalanche of lost love.

"Anything at all?" JJ added, unconsciously hoping her words would spur the young doctor's thinking process.

"There is one thing that we could do..." Reid trailed off, making the team become rather irritated and anxious.

"What is it, Reid?" Gideon and Rossi instantaneously barked simultaneously.

"We could go up to him and ask him who we are… but we'd need permission from his doctor."

The last few words of that sentence quashed the sliver of hope that the idea had given them. Finding a doctor in the busiest hospital in the D.C.-Metropolitan area at midnight was going to be like finding one needle in a particular pile of needles. And if his nurse was _ANY _indication o how his doctor would be… yikes! The idea of asking him who they were had a snowball's chance in hell. And even if this particular snowball was made of the finest substance of fire-resistant water, there was no way of prognosticating his response without an O.K. from his doctor.

"Couldn't you give the OK, Reid? After all, you _are _a doctor." Emily whispered to him as to not give any ideas as to who we are. She, more than anyone, wanted to keep the idea-snowball alive and fireproof.

"I'm not that kind of doctor. It would be against regulation to make psychological decisions about a patient that wasn't quite mine." He whispered back, the somewhat-smile on Emily' face disapparating. It hurt him to see Emily's mouth twisted into such a distraught figure- he knew what this was doing to her.

"I'll go find his doctor, O.K.?" he stated, authoritatively bringing the conversation's volume level back to a normal speaking volume. Without any chance to see anyone's distraught face, he dashed out the door and quickly shut it behind him. The 5 remaining fully conscious team members looked out the window to see him awkwardly speed walk to the receptionist's desk, of which there was thankfully no line.

Emily couldn't believe it. Her life was crumbling and falling to her feet, and soon there would be nothing left. She wanted to just close her eyes and click her heels 3 times and be whisked to Kansas, a far off dreamland in which this trouble would be somewhere over the rainbow. Heck, if they weren't even in a public place she would have tried it. But she knew she had to be there for him during this trying time.

Just then Rossi tapped her on the shoulder.

"Em. Look!" he said, pointing to the window on the door. She turned around to see 2 large men in business suits and ties grabbing Reid on the shoulders and walking him out the door.

"What the hell?"


End file.
